20 Years Ago
a breakthrough in the yellow-tile bathroom
My 20 year high-school reunion was tonight.
And this is the bathroom I used to cry in.
The place I'd go when I felt alone.
Which was often.
I remember hiding in the stalls sometimes, skipping class for longer than I intended just to get away from the noise of not belonging. At that point in my life I didn’t really understand WHY I didn’t belong. Why I had a hard time interacting normally with others. I didn’t even know there was such thing as social cues, and understanding them certainly wasn’t on my radar. I was a straight “A” student with a lengthy tardy tally, and a tendency to make things awkward under perfectly normal circumstances.
Not much has changed in that regard.
I did have a few friends. Good ones. The kind that stick around even when you haven’t spoken in a while. The kind that are the right kind of “off”. I sat with them tonight during the (somewhat twilight zone-esque) slideshow that came on after a speech we didn’t listen to. We weren’t surprised to see precisely 0 photos of us come through, even in the group shots submitted. And it’s because we were never really around other people. Just each other. Perpetually magnetizing others in the polar opposite direction.
Food consumed along with some sufficient confusion over some 1991-1992 footage that appeared suddenly on screen, we decided to take a walk.
First, down the music hall. One of the only passageways that felt familiar to me as we wandered. I grew up making noise of all kinds, though music was the only kind considered “appropriate”. So I threw my heart into that art as a youth, spending time between percussive play and vocal performance; projections of a voice that was only beginning to bud in those formative years of my life. Even in collaborative art spaces, I felt isolated at times. My steps recalled a memory not touched on in years, one in which the percussion section had decided to take it’s rehearsal time outside. It was an overcast day, and the clouds were heavy with moisture. As we began to play a moody rendition of Claire De Lune, the sky unzipped and sprinkled delicately in rhythm to our tune. I looked around and saw no traces of wonder on other faces and wondered if anyone else even noticed the gift.
After the music hall, came a commons area. And that bathroom. THE bathroom. I took a selfie in the mirror and was zapped back in time to the crying eyes that used to look back instead of the confident, fiery ones I see now. I was made fun of for my thinness and called anorexic because I had a hard time putting on weight. None of my crushes liked me back, and I was picked on for being smart and responsible. If younger me only could have known what awaited her as a result of her “difference”, she would have been delighted by the idea of losing these made up popularity contests.
My friends finished up in the bathroom and I stayed behind. I needed a moment with this ghost of my child self. A present, participatory reflection instead of a passive one. A side-by-side, heart-to-heart, engaged interaction. It felt liberating to step into a past space of sadness with a profound sense of found self when that space originally seemed like my forever.
Honestly? I’m so proud of me.
Not just of “now” me, but of “past” me; for knowing I was different, but not knowing how, and somehow finding my curiosity for life despite the crying. It has led me to spectacular adventures and ways of existing that CONTINUE to pull me away from what is pushed as collective reality, but at this point in my life, I welcome it. No more tears are shed over not being understood by the majority, and haven’t been for quite some time.
Cheers to a lifetime of self-reflection on the sh*tter.
